Hey there, and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. I was talking with my husband last night about how when I first started out, it was the beginning of the GFC, and I had no idea about that. And I had my first store, well, my first store was an e-commerce store, but my first physical store was on like English people call it on a high street.

So it was on, you know, a road not inside of a shopping center. And. What I didn't know at the time and have become a bit of a weather buff, what buff was that? We were at the beginning, not only of the GFC, but of La Nya. Now, I don't know if you know what La Nya is, but Lania basically, it rains nonstop. And when you are selling baby products to mothers on a high street with not a lot of parking, you can imagine the foot traffic.

Gets down significantly. And honestly, there were weeks where we literally had nobody come into the shop. Thank God we actually had E-commerce, because without that, we would not have had a business. And it was going through all of that, that I realized that I needed to diversify my income streams. So that was actually, you know, it was one of those victims of circumstance where we then went into distribution, where we became the sole distributor of a European product, and then on top of that we went into manufacturing.

So today's guest is gonna tell you all about how they have diversified their income stream to become a multi seven figure business. Welcome to the show, Natalie, from Sew Hungry hippie, sew Hungry Hip. I was gonna say Hippo. Oh my God. I know everybody does. I am so excited to talk to you because I.

Absolutely love everything that you do. I'm such a fan of your work, so thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you for the inviting me. I'm so happy to be here. You are like me. You are an OG veteran when it comes to e-commerce, so tell us the story. Okay. Well I started in 2016 around there selling digital products patterns online, and it was slow.

Like everyone, you know, I tell a lot of people who start up, it always takes longer than you think. You have to just stick with it. Right? I, I thought, oh, this'll be fun. Yeah, right. So after a few years of that. I had a lot of questions from SOS asking me where I was getting my materials, and something lit in my brain, oh, I should provide the materials.

And so I started sourcing and importing my products. And from there it really took off. But I will say it's a lot of work in the beginning, and sometimes you don't know what's going to work, but consistency is key. And that's how I got here. That's interesting. That is very much along the same vein of as how I started out, believe it or not.

So we, I used to sew reusable cloth nappies, modern cloth nappies, and when I opened the store, that's, we sold pre-made ones, but we also started selling the fabric because I wanted this really beautiful fabric. But I had to order a hundred meters of it from China. Right? Yeah. And so you're like, but I only need two meters.

What do I do with the other 80 meters? And so I started selling the rest of it on for like parenting and sewing forums. And so I would like crowd this like OG crowdsourcing. I'd just be like, you pay me and I'll do, I'll do the ordering and the importing just so I can have my two meters of fabric. Oh.

The digital patterns, did you go into this for it being to be your whole business, or was it just a little thing on the side that you were doing for a bit of extra income? Yeah, I did it in the beginning on the side with the hopes that one day I could quit my nursing job. I was a nurse, an rn, and I liked being a nurse.

It's not that I didn't like it, but I thought, I really love being creative. And I, I like to share any knowledge that I learn and pick up with others. And I thought, oh, well this would be a good outlet. And I knew it would take a while. I just didn't know it would be years, you know, I figured, well, months it, it'll take off in months and I'll be able to quit my job.

And in hindsight, time does go so fast. So really it didn't take that long. It was four years, I think, or three years. I. Before I could quit my nursing job, but I'm so glad that I started before I knew everything, if you know what I mean. Oh, yes, yes. I have to ask you, 'cause this is one of the questions I ask all of our clients when they come in, which is you came in with the, with the goal of quitting the nursing job.

And obviously you had some sales coming in. Did you ever reverse engineer? Okay, so I'm selling a pattern for $20. I'm making, you know, $80,000 a year, which means I'm gonna have to sell this number of patterns to be able to quit. Did you ever do that? So, funny enough, I, after about a year I did that 'cause I thought, wait a second, why am I not making much money?

And then I went, oh. I have to sell a lot of patterns to make that kinda money. So yeah, it took me a little bit to catch on. Eventually got there and I thought, okay, I need more than patterns, obviously, which is interesting because patterns come with such a high margin, like once you make it, it's gravy after that, right?

Yeah. Should be. I don't know why a lot of, like some people can get. To a place where they're comfortable with that amount of money coming in. 'cause most of it's profit on the PDF patterns. But for me, I never, I never kind of hid it big. I was never really in the in crowd, so to speak. I didn't know how to get there.

I'm not super great at networking because even though I'm emotionally intelligent and I can talk in a crowd and be comfortable, I'm an introvert at heart. So I always feel when I'm networking that I'm bothering people. It's such a. Problem. You know? So I didn't really know how to get to a, a platform where people could find me and know about me.

So it did take me a while to realize, oh, I just have to show up even if 10 people are on, let's say a live show, and I'm gonna answer questions. And if I don't know, I'll just say, I don't know, but I'll figure it out for you. And it, it sort of, it was in, instead of straight steps up, it was like, take some steps up and then drop.

Okay, let's start again. Steps up and then another drop. And it's just, I just kept going. I didn't stop. Why? Why didn't you stop? Because so many people would get three to four years in. Yeah. And you can see things are getting better. You can see you are making more money, but you're still not at that point where you can quit the job.

Mm-hmm. I would love to know what got you to the point that allowed you to quit, but also what kept you going through all of that? I think I just have a really tenacious part of me in my character that just refuses and, and some of this, I'm gonna go back and tell you, in high school and college, I was in sports.

I was never the star athlete. Like, not even close, not, I mean. Maybe I was the last athlete crossing the finish line sometimes, and I think that taught me to not give up because only what 10% of high school students are doing sports. And I thought, I wanna be out there doing it. I don't wanna be watching on the sidelines.

And I've just kind of carried through with that. Thought pattern, and it served me well in the military as well, because even though I wasn't a star track athlete, I built endurance. And so I could do the Army physical fitness test without dying like most of my peers were. And I thought, huh. So I'm not a rabbit and I'm not quite a turtle, but I'm in the middle.

I can finish strong. I'm not the fastest, but I know I can do it. And I think when you. Just continue to finish things you're building yourself worth in a way. Yeah. You know, you can do it. Yeah. And yeah, most people would've given up, especially when I wasn't selling tons of patterns. And I, I even went to a printer locally and had some printed, 'cause I thought, well, maybe people want the printed booklet.

Physical. Yeah. Right. The physical pattern. And, and it wasn't like they were flying off the shelves. But I just refused to give up. I thought, if I have to work forever as a nurse, then so be it. But I'm also gonna do this. We'll see what happens. You are such a, what's the word? I dunno what the word I'm looking for is, but I didn't even really know you were in the military.

You said it and I'm like, oh, I feel like I knew that, but I didn't. But yeah, I, I think you're the kind of person that people underestimate. But I think it's because you are the introvert. You are not the person who's out there, the first person to speak, or you're not the first person to jump in with the answer.

You are, you know, you are quietly processing it all in the background. Mm-hmm. And having epiphanies that nobody else is even having. And then you come out with the best piece of advice and. It's interesting because I don't, I would never look at you and go, oh, that lady was clearly in the military. Like, she is a hot ass.

So you went from, were you in the military before you became a an rn? I, yes. So I went to university on a scholarship with the Army, and so the agreement was when I graduated I would give four years active duty. Yep. Okay. Wow. And then RN to multi seven, figure entrepreneur selling. Fabric and patterns.

Right? Right. Who would've thought, who would've thunk it? Um, okay, so you said 2016 and it took you about four years fast forwarders to 2020. What happened? Well, COVID hit the world, as we all know, and I thought, well, great. There's the end of my entrepreneur business. And I thought, I'm just gonna sit here and see what happens.

Funny enough for a lot of us e-commerce, it skyrocketed. Yeah. There was huge demand. I wish in hindsight, I had been going live then. At that time I really wasn't, but it changed everything for me. Suddenly a lot more in terms of volume was selling. And I thought, okay, well this is interesting. And I just hung there for a while, about nine months.

And then a friend said to me, you know, I wanna sew, but I have so many questions and I'm scared and I just wish you'd go on Facebook Live or whatever. And I thought, oh, well I, I can do that. What do do.

I, I did Facebook Lives and I streamed it to YouTube. I used Streamy Yard at the time. It just multi, simultaneously streamed to both platforms and showed up every week once a week no matter what. Even even sick. I would just show up and I would say, I am not feeling the best. But here we are. What are your questions and what would, would you just answer questions or would you So.

Sometimes I would sew because I didn't know what else I was going to do. Really? Mm-hmm. And I thought, okay, I'll show up and I'll start sewing a something very simple like a zipper pouch. And if you all have questions, please just pop 'em out, ask away. I can do something else. I can demo. And after some time, after a few months.

People learned about it and shared with friends and it went from, you know, 10 people watching to 40 to 90 and and so on. So it took some time, but it did grow 'cause I was consistent. I did not mess with the schedule. I showed up no matter what. If I knew I would be out of town, I'd record it and still have it go at the same time.

Wow. Yeah. I think the biggest takeaway for me from that is you didn't get discouraged because your first thing did not go viral and you didn't get discouraged when your second thing did not go viral, and you did not get discouraged when week three, only 10 people showed up. You just kept doing it. And I think in, and this was only a few years ago, we're not talking about, you know, 2007 when Facebook was brand new.

We're talking about just a couple of years ago and. I think we are so obsessed and the, the obsession and the expectation that the first thing I'm going to do is going to get me thousands of views, thousands of likes. Right. You know, I'm gonna be able to monetize that thing. Yes. But you've told us right from the beginning is it took four years for you to be able to replace your job.

It took, you know, how many months before you actually had a hun, you know, a hundred people turning up to be able. You know, to, to get the, the followers. How did you monetize that? Because you and I now, with our marketing brains, if someone came to us and said, I'm gonna go live, we'd be like, Hmm, okay. So we have to have a plan to monetize that.

You were just like, my friend needed help. I'll go live and see what happens. Right. Yeah, so it's really funny. For two years, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, but I, I am an open book. For two years I went live without having a real plan on how I was gonna monetize. I hoped people would go to my website, but it took me two years to be ready, I guess, or confident or to.

I think it was okay to say, no, I've got this stuff for sale in my shop right now. Here are the links. Help yourself. And now it's at the point, well, two years in. It was at the point when whenever I went live, it was like a an ATM. It was match. So. Walk us through that. What do you mean? Do you mean it was an ATM and you would get sales on the website of the fabric and the patterns?

Or tell us, tell us how, because I, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Well, I noticed that people cannot handle barriers in any way. So if I'm talking about a product, I can't just say, oh, go to my website and purchase, it's, it's right there. No, I have to provide the link. Right then in the comments, or if you're using a platform where you can pop it on the screen, great.

I have to do that every time, or it's too much of a barrier for people, or they forget or whatever reason. So now I've got it down. If I'm the second, the camera goes on my product or overhead, or I'm showing it up here, or I'm demoing it, that link is right there. If they wanna purchase. It's really, really helped and the show still runs, so if they click the link to purchase, it just pops in a window over here and the show is still running.

Oh wow. So how, what are you using to do that? Right now I'm using this program called Video Wise and it's very easy to set up. They walk you through for weeks on how to set it up and I really love it. Before that I was using Streamy Yard and just having my assistant put the links in the comments. Mm-hmm.

As people watching on both platforms and either way works fine, but the video wise, it's more automated, I would say. So it's a smoother show. Okay. So yeah, you've gone, you're going live. Are you still going live once a week? Yeah, I go live now on Wednesday nights at 7:00 PM and Friday mornings at 11:00 AM 'cause that was another thing.

Some people couldn't make the Friday show 'cause they're working and so they asked for an evening show. So I thought I can do that. It's just a half an hour, let's go. And, and how much money do I make while I do this? So, and do you do the same thing on both? Like, do you do the, do you do the same tutorial?

No, I'll vary it. I do vary it. And so what I do now, which I learned after about a year, I email them the replay. Oh, smart Miss the Friday show. 'cause they were at work. They can watch it later. And I might throw an Easter egg in there, like, get 20% off if you use the link in the show. You know, things like that.

Do you put a time limit on that replay? Like do you gate it after 48 hours or a week or something? You they can't see it anymore. Two weeks. Two weeks. And then what happens after two weeks? I'm so excited 'cause I actually don't know the answer. We didn't prep this. I'm like, I'm, it's like choose your own adventure, right?

Yeah. I, I pull it down to, uh, private on YouTube. I take it off of Facebook and. You can find it if you really dig on my website, but it would be difficult. Do you sell it? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The everything. So the thing about it, over time, my audience has learned, if you don't get those products during the show or immediately after the show, they're probably gonna be sold out.

Wow. The actual tutorial is available for two weeks. And then it gets locked away. Mm-hmm. Does then that then go into like a membership that people can access? It's funny. It goes, so if you are on my email list, you'll get a rerun at some point during the year. And all that is automated. I use Klaviyo.

Mm-hmm. And I have that flow already automated and set up. And then a lot of times, so I have this membership for my VIP members and they can have access anytime. Wow. And what can we ask? What do people pay for access to? Essentially it's the vault, right? The vault of all of these trainings. What are they paying to get access to that?

Super cheap. It's 75 American dollars per year. Wow. I feel like it should be more, but that's beside the point. I feel like it should be too. You're making money from something that you did, and so the reality is even if it was $10, I feel like it should be more than 75, but it's $75 that you are getting It's money for jam.

It is Literally, I've done the work, I stuck it in a vault. Someone now pays me for it. And I think this is the reason why I wanted you to come on the show because I see so many people sharing stuff on Instagram, on YouTube, and they never think, huh, maybe someone would pay me for access to that. You've done.

Yeah. And you don't, don't you think that when you have to pay for something, you value it more? A hundred percent. Right, because I know this for a reason. So I used to have this product, I used to have this freebie download. It was nine Ways to Move Stock without having a sale. I think we had something like 30,000 people download that.

And from that. I think maybe I'm gonna go with two people ever emailed me to say that they did something and made money. Oh my gosh. But I know that this thing works. So then I packaged it up with some extras and now we charge for it. We have had maybe 10,000 people buy it, and the amount of emails we get saying, oh my God, I just made $60,000.

I just made $40,000. I just made $8,000. I just made, it's like. The minute that they pay for it, it starts to make sense and it's like, huh, I've paid for this. Maybe I should give it a go. Or, and it's not rocket science, but people say, I paid for it, so I thought, uh, I better do something. I better take action.

Yeah, better take action. And it's the same thing with you. It's like, I'm paying for this thing. I have access. Maybe I should get out and sew something. Right. Yep, that's right. Recently I thought too, oh, I should pick a monthly winner of somebody that finishes a bag and I give them a hundred dollars to spend in my shop, and it's just incentivizing.

I just want them to get to it. Take the action. So do you then use, is that UGC that you use on your social media so when they're submitting their pictures or you are using that to fill your social feed? Yes. Huh. That's a very cheap way. 'cause your a hundred dollars, it's like $50 cost to you and now you are getting dozens if not hundreds of people who are paying you essentially to, you would be paying them for the UGC and you're getting all of this for 50 bucks a month.

Right? Like that is brilliant my friend. That is brilliant. Thank you, and so we have the membership. I just want to like put the umbrella over the different ways that you bring money into the business because there's other things I know we haven't touched on. So first of all, we sell pa You sell patterns.

Yes. Then you sell the fabrics and the notions that go with it. Mm-hmm. Then you sell the educational videos that you are recording as lead gen and sales. Anyway, you're just making more money off of it. How else do you make money? I have two subscriptions, not one, but two. And this is not the subscription to the vault.

This is something else. This is physical subscriptions. Mm-hmm. I have surprise vinyl club. So we, I design a lot of the patterns on the faux leathers that I bring in. And so every month we ship out a surprise design. They don't know what they're getting. I film a video, I give them the QR code and they get the pattern.

And so all of that arrives and then we share on Facebook. And in my little private Facebook group, everyone is sharing what they're making with it. So that's brilliant. That has been amazing because. It's like you can anticipate what you are gonna bring in that month with that subscription. You know? It helps anyways.

Yeah, it's monthly recurring revenue. So it's, I mean, you will always get churn and you'll always get ups and downs, but you know that I have, you know, approximately this much money coming in from that. And then you have another subscription. So what I love about this is you are just selling fun, like someone's getting something.

Yeah, but it's like. Surprise. Right. You don't get a choice. People. I'm exciting. And how much is that subscription? That one is $60 a month. Wow. Okay. And this, okay, so many people tell me, and I hear this over and over again, like. I need to be affordable. I need to be cheap. I feel like $60 is affordable, but I think there will be a lot of people listening going, my people would never pay $60.

I started at 29 95. Huh, and now you're up to 60? Yep. Great. All righty. And what is the other membership? The other one is, it's called the Anna Maria Box, and that is a famous designer of fabrics in the sewing industry. Mm-hmm. And I asked her if it was okay to do, she gave me her full blessing. So each month they get a kit to make a bag.

And again, I, I give them a video tutorial. I'm making it. A pattern. It doesn't have to be my pattern. I might ask a friend, designer to, you know, I'll buy their patterns and ship 'em out, but it's everything they need to make that project. And in the in the box, I always tell them, if you don't wanna make this project, feel free to change the project.

It's okay. This is just to get you going in case you're in a slump. Mm-hmm. Or not feeling very inspired. Yeah. And that's been a real hit that's really grown this year. Wow. How do you promote that? How much is that one? That one is 75 a month. Wow. Okay. And so how are you promoting these? So obviously you're going live twice a week, which some people may well think, huh?

That's a bit exhausting. Doesn't have to be long in fact, shorter is better. Ah, okay. I used to start out with hour long shows and now I really try to keep 'em at 30 minutes. Wow. And is always you. It's me and my, my manager Vicki, she's with me now a lot because I wanted people to be comfortable with somebody else in case I needed some time off.

Mm-hmm. And they love her. I think they love her more than me. Yeah. Yay. I've gotta this point where they love my team more than me. And can you see that diversifying. Like bringing other people in? Or do you feel like it has to be a face? Good question. I think it could totally diversify. I just, I think there's a period of time where you just sort of ease the other folks in.

Mm-hmm. And you gradually do that rather than throwing 'em in all of a sudden, you know, by themselves. Yeah. And do you do. Like the collaboration instagramy Facebook Live thing with like, say the designer where they would come in and sew with you. Is that something that you do? I haven't yet, but that's a great idea.

I'm gonna write that down. You can have that. Well, then you're exposing each other to each other's audience. Right? So That's right. That's genius. Okay. There's my introvert coming out. I never even thought of it. So we have. Two memberships. We have the vault, we have the patterns, we have the subscriptions.

How are you selling all of these things? Because some people would listen and go, but Sal tells me not to, you know, not to focus on all the things she says, just focus on one thing. How do you make sure that part of the, you know, the one part of the business isn't being diluted while you are trying to focus on saying, selling the subscriptions or selling the fabric.

Great question. In the beginning when it was just me and my husband, Ramel and I, we only had one subscription. So now that I have like 10 people, I can do, I can shift things for them to work on. Mm-hmm. And then I can work on the marketing, as you know, is so important. Yeah. So I do pay for ads, I have meta ads, and I have Google ads, and I have two.

Experts. I would say that run those, not big firms, but experts that I personally know, and they take care a lot. A lot. They take care of almost all of it. All I have to do is supply the creative part, which I'm happy to do. I just film it on my phone or wherever and send it to them, and they do their magic.

So I think for a long time I thought ads were, you know. The dark side or evil. And now I realize, what was I thinking? I could be even bigger if I had done ads from the beginning because where else do you get the traffic? Like again, we're coming back to this concept that people think if I just post on social media, and I'm not saying social media needs to be, it has to be part of the equation, but I think there is a very few businesses that can rely just on social media to bring in sales, right?

And, you know, I, I get great organic reach, but what you find is over time, it's the same people buying and you always have to bring in new people into your fold because people will fall away for whatever reason. I. So it's really important to bring in the new customers. I think at the time when I was learning with the ad agency, at the time, I had my returning customer rate was something like 70%, and they just, yeah.

I'm like, people come to me, go, oh, but I have like a 70% customer return rate. And I go, oh, no. Yeah, yeah. You'd think it's great. And then you realize, oh no, it's not. No, no. We have to be topping up the customer funnel and not everybody is going to stay. Right. So what do you use, what have you found? Because, and maybe you, the answer is you test lots of different things, but what do you find is the best offer that gets you a sticky customer?

Not the, not the one and done, I'm just here for free shipping and then I'm off to the next person. Right. But what do your people love? I think in general, people wanna be heard. And so I try on the live shows to call out their names, especially when I recognize a customer over and over again. I'm very responsive to emails.

We send probably two or three emails a week. I love you right now. Great. See that guy? Can you just please say that again? Natalie, how many emails per week do you send? Two to three emails per week. On the dot? Mm-hmm. Yep. And, and approximately how much of, as a percentage of your revenue comes from email marketing, do you think?

Oh, 60%. I bet. Wow. Wow. Because industry average is 30, so that's great. Yeah. So the thing about my email is I'll give education in the top and so support or hoorays or whatever, but they always have a block at the bottom of six products. Yep. That will get them to click over and browse. Do you know what is so funny is that we had another, we had a fabric business in our scale store accelerator, and she did a pre-sales campaign for fabric that was not coming for three months and sold out.

Amazing. But wow. She showed us the email. I was like, oh, show us the email. Like, what is this email that converts? She said, I have a 60% open rate. And I'm like, um, that is unheard of. And then she showed us the email. It was like 12 scrolls. And I said to her, this breaks every email marketing rule in the book.

Like, but. Don't change it like Right. Keep percent open rate and you are selling out, like do not listen. You have to be testing and measuring. And when you said that, I'm thinking it sounds exactly like her. She has a little bit of education or she has something about a designer and then she might have a product and then she might have a tip.

You know, she, she obviously changes it around a little bit, but I'm like, it's all good and well for the industry to say short form works or use gifs or it's what your people want. Right. Yeah. Find out what is working and keep doing it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And you know, recently I didn't do the whole SMS text thing for years.

Oh, I was gonna say, uh, my eye started twitching just then. Uhhuh, I started that and that is bonkers. Selena, this morning I sent out a text to 2000 people. I'm having the best Wednesday I've had in a long time. Wow. And do you time the SMSs for the quiet? Like if you know, okay. Look, Wednesdays in May just, we just like historically, not a great time.

Are you looking at that to go, that's when we're gonna send the message or did you just luck out? I usually do. I usually find that if I send it. Sort of after dinner, before bedtime in that little two hour range there between five and 7:00 PM that it gets a better response. However, this morning I didn't wanna wait and I launched a new canvas this morning and I thought, I'm just gonna see what happens.

And that's kind of the magic is I'll just try things and if it works, great, and if not, then let's tweak it. But it worked. For whatever reason today it worked. And that's it. And that's it. Testing and measuring and what, what works for one doesn't always work for somebody else. It's interesting that you say that because again, someone in our accelerator was saying, we go through a little bit of a analysis of the data and she said, oh, it never occurred.

Like, it never occurred to me to look at this. But what I realize is nearly all of my sales come in. It was a really, it was mums and it was a really random time. I'm gonna say between nine and 11:00 AM. And if you like, she has the same market. I would've had, well I had when I had my stores and I was like, that was never a busy time for us.

And she's like, I'm looking at when the sales come in between nine and 11:00 AM And I'm like, great. So now we know when to send the newsletter. We are sending that newsletter at 8:55 AM Yes, exactly. Oh my gosh. So it's, yeah. Again, what works for someone doesn't mean it works for your customers. And so being able to.

Send all of those newsletters. I would love to know, do you send this, when you said two to three newsletters, are you segmenting your list to do that? I do have segments, yes. Okay, and so how do you choose what to send to Who? Like do the membership people get something different to the people who are on the vault for subscription?

Yeah, my VIP members get the first email ahead of everyone else because I want them to be able to buy the products before they're sold out, just in case like a, just in case. So they get theirs first and then a day later, everyone else on the. Recently opened lists. So let's say, I think mine right now for consistent opens is around 30,000 people.

So they'll get the email next. And then the third one, I hit the people who opened but didn't purchase. And that's the biggest sales day. And are they all getting the same email though? Or I change the subject line and sometimes the top photo. Okay. And that's it. Okay. Interesting, interesting. I heard 30,000 subscribers in there and a lot of people would just be, which explains why so much revenue comes in from that, and a lot of people would aspire to have 30,000 people on their newsletter list.

How have you done that? Well, let me begin with, I have 65,000 total, but congratulations. Thank you. The 35,000 of them though, are not consistently opening, so that's why I don't send them all the time 'cause I don't wanna pay for that. But this, this was over years and I have to say I ran, I ran an ad on meta that anytime I run an ad, the first call to action is get on my email list.

And then I put a fly out on my Shopify store, sign up on my email list, I'll send you a coupon right away. Mm-hmm. And that is what has helped me build, because when I started, I had 200 people like this. We're talking 200 to 30,000 in, I don't know, five years. And I didn't push it as much as I could have. I could have gone faster, but I didn't know.

So I just said reading books and watching YouTube tutorials and thinking, okay, I need to bring in more people. Let's, let's do some of this stuff. And what are you finding Acquisition cost on an email is these days? Oh, I think I just looked at that the other day. Let me check here. Yeah, a dollar 82. A dollar 82 as compared to at a conversion ad, which may be costing you.

I think I was at, I was in an event last week and I think they were saying an average conversion ad in e-commerce is between 90 and $180. So, yeah, I was gonna say it's expensive. Yeah, it's expensive. And so what you are doing is going, you just come in for a a dollar 82, and even if only one in 10 people buy something that's still only $18 a lead.

Right? And so. That's okay. But you still have a chance to sell to the other nine people. Yes. What have you found, and again, this is gonna be different per store, but what have you found is the thing that gets people in? Is it discounts? No. For me it's not discounts. I'm weirdly enough because IAD tested that.

I tried 10% off. I tried $10 off, and I tried a free pattern, and I tried giveaway. The giveaway was the worst. Mm-hmm. The 10% off was the second worst. $10 was okay, but the thing they wanted the most was the free pattern, the thing that literally costs you nothing, nothing. So not free shipping, which is gonna cost you 10, $15 of pure profit, right.

Not $10 of pure profit. It's not, but it's, yeah. Giveaway. Giveaway can be, can be interesting because I've seen people get, I'm not joking, 5 cent leads off a giveaway and so this is where you have to, I know also it is one of those things where you know, you can put a hundred dollars behind it and find out, like it doesn't have to be a huge investment.

So for a dollar 82, you are getting, there is no added cost to that. You're a dollar 82 a lead. No free shipping, no $10 off. Do you know what the conversion like from how, what are you getting in conversions? Do they get the free pattern when they sign up or do they get the free pattern on their first order?

They get the free pattern in an email right away. And in the free pattern, I show them. Like a video tutorial that's included in there for free. It'll get you all through it, but if you wanna make what I am making, here's a kit that we offer and it's $25, but we'll, we'll sell it to you for 20. Huh? So it's only $5 off and it, we actually, we make those kits with off cuts, so it really doesn't cost us much to make them.

But I didn't wanna put it in the dumpster, you know, in the tip. I just love that you just, you, I feel like you are the queen of making money from scraps. You're like, I'll just make money out of thin air, my friends money out of thin air. I think it's 'cause I've had to be scrappy in my life. You know, I've had times where I've really had to buckle down and figure things out, and I thought, we're gonna do this.

We're gonna find a way to make it work. What I feel like people need to take away from this is your best customers don't need to be discount hunters. Oh, it's something give, yeah, give them something they valued. We didn't really go there, but I know that you've niched, you know, you have quite a niche for the faux leathers, and this is something I'm hearing.

I think we have five fabric businesses that we work with off the top of my head, and they have found when they niche down to a particular. Type of design or a particular type of designer or like a fabric style, like you do sales just go through the roof and the gen, the best thing about that is they make so much more money because those things are more premium products that have a better margin.

But you are getting, you've thought about the customer funnel and you've gone, I'm gonna try and get these people as cheap as possible with the, the newsletter leads. Then I'm going to give them something which costs me nothing. Great. And then on top of that, I'm gonna get them to pay me to actually use the thing I just gave them for free that they value.

Yes. That is brilliant. And you know, I never thought of it like that until you just said that back to me. Thank you. You are welcome. Because I, I say this out loud because. I see too many retailers getting caught up in this. I have to get a, I have to give a discount to get people in. I've gotta give people 30% off on their first order.

And all I'm thinking is, well, hold on. I've spent thousands of dollars with you and I'm getting nothing on the back end. Like I'm this loyal customer and you're giving that person 30% off, right? So you're giving them 30% off, which they may or may not stick around, so you could lose money on that customer.

Yep. And then on top of that. The thing that in the first email, you are not promoting something like the way you have laid this out is you would be an idiot not to buy this thing. Like I gave you the pattern. Like, hello, if you're gonna take some action, like I've, I've, I've literally boxed this thing up for you.

You don't even have to think about it. Right. It's not just, oh, hey, welcome to our business. Um, here's some stuff you might like to buy. Because that is so arbitrary. You don't know what it is they like to buy, but what you've done is this is what you're getting and this is what you need to do it. Right.

And that is brilliant. Let's go to action people. Yeah. And you are setting them up for, I don't know if you've done, if you have done this intentionally or inadvertently, but what you are basically setting them up for is. You can come and join my vault to get access to these things and I'm gonna sell you the kit.

Or you can go only do the membership because you know I will deliver on the pattern and the product and I'm just gonna make your life easier. So right from that first welcome email, you are setting them up for everything that you are going to sell to them in the future. Isn't that awesome? Boom. Boom.

And you, when you were saying Nation down, it's exactly right. People that. Have been around, they understand I will never bring in brown fabric. I will never bring in primitives. Like we are bold and bright here. You know, we wanna be in your face. And that's interesting because Lilia is the same. It was funny when she showed us the email, and I'm, she's gonna be on the podcast to talk us through it, but I will give you a spoiler.

But essentially she showed us the email and there were 12 prints from a specific designer. And I said to her, she said to me, what do I do? I've sold out of eight of them and four did not sell, and I've already put the order in with the supplier. And I said to her, I can tell you which ones didn't sell.

And they were very bold patterns. And there were four that were neutrals. They were like, you know, beige or a blush, and the rest were, you know, the colors that I would wear. And I said to her, it was that one, that one, that one, that one. She goes, how did you know? I said, odd. Right. And she said, well, what do I do because I've already put the order in.

I said, you call that supplier and you say, scrap those four and just give me more of the other stuff. Yeah, why not? And she said, not do, do you think that they'll do that? And I'm like, you've already paid them. They don't care like you, it's not like you're asking to remove, you know, to get cash back. Right.

And she did. And they did. And so do you know what she did? She went and did another email and said, I managed to get some more and sold out. Amazing. Love that that stuff is not coming for three months. Incredible. Yeah. Such good work. And that's, but that's the power of niching down and knowing what your customer wants.

And that's, to me, that's the power of pre-selling being really, really clear. But it's, you think that you have to be everything to everyone. And just over and over. Unless you're a department store, that's, that cannot be independent retail. Right? Exactly. Correct. Yeah. That took me a while to really fully understand.

I cannot, number one, make everybody happy and I cannot have everything for sale in my shop. Those are. There was so much more I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to talk to you about moving into your warehouse and having to make the decision to close your shop front down. I feel like I could talk to you forever, but I think we're gonna have to get you back on and tell us about just the hiccups, the obstacles that you've overcome just in the last few months, because I know that you have made some really big changes.

You have retired your husband, you needed more warehouse space because you've grown so, so much, you've had to bring on more staff. I feel like this is the perfect place to end because you have dropped so much knowledge and if we give people anymore, their brains will explode and they will not be able to take action.

So. It is not so hungry hippos, which I'm sure I'm not the first person to say mad at all. If people are thinking, this woman is amazing and I wanna see these patterns, I want access to the vault. I know we had a lot, have a lot of crafters who are listening, where can they find you? The amazing Natalie Tini.

You can find me at So Hungry Hippie, SEW. Like Sewing and Hungry Hippie. Yep. All in one. And I'm, I am on the websites. I am on social media, all with that name. Fabulous. I feel like you need to go and buy the domain, so Hungry Hippo, just in case I should, yes. Yes. Totally. Damn those board games from when we were children.

Right. Natalie, thank you so much for sharing. I think there are so many takeaways for people in this episode that. I feel like this is one everybody should bookmark and come back and listen to again and again. Every time you think you need a discount, you come and listen to this episode Every time. Think you need to be running conversion ads, you come back and listen to this episode.

So thank you so much for sharing. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I. So that's a wrap. I'd love to hear what insight you've gotten from this episode and how you're going to put it into action. If you're a social kind of person, follow me at the Selena night and make sure to leave a comment and let me know.

And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration, or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review. On your platform of choice because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and e-commerce stores just like yours, that we can help to scale.

And when that happens, it's a win for you, a win for your community, and a win for your customers. I'll see you on the next episode.